The Rissik Marshall Collection

A large collection of Worcester porcelain, English glass and silver and other wine labels.

The porcelain collection is probably the most representative of its kind, consisting of over one 1,000 patterns of soft-paste Bristol and Worcester of the First Period. Worcester made fewer figures than any of the other major English porcelain factories, and the Marshall Collection includes no fewer than four pairs - the Turks, the Gardeners, and the Sportsman and companion. Other rarities include two pairs of standing candlesticks, four pairs of different knives and forks, and the only known Worcester cabaret. The collection of glass, while on a much smaller scale than the Worcester Porcelain, is representative of English Glass from the mid-17th century to the early 19th century. The collection of wine labels consists of about 500 examples dating from the 18th and 19th centuries. The gift is in memory of Mr and Mrs Marshall's only child, William Somerville Marshall who was killed in action in Holland in 1944.

Nominally inspired by Lucretius' De rerum natura, Piero di Cosimo's The Forest Fire takes its scientific subject and embellishes it with fantastical creatures from the artist's imagination: Bulls, bears, lions and deer-like creatures with human faces all flee wearily from a fire.

Rubens' portrait of Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel dates from about 1629. The Earl was a great collector, and Rubens had painted the earl's wife a few years earlier on a visit to Antwerp. This drawing in pen and ink with a chalk base is unusually informal, reflecting perhaps the comfortable relationship between artist and patron.